Psalms 90:2–6

"The Lord" here is not Jehovah, but the Ruler of the earth and men. He is always the Lord of life, and He is the Mighty and Eternal One: "Before the mountains were brought forth, or You had formed the earth and the world, and from age to age, You are, O Mighty" (El). Here then is abundant resource: the Fountain of life is always open. The link with eternity is in the Eternal God Himself, who is never distant from His creatures.

God is called the Father of eternity, and the eternal God. Scripture also says He inhabits eternity. We must take the word in its full unlimited bearing, as showing the infinity of Deity in regard to what we call time. We get lost when we try to think of eternity. Time, to us, is what comes between events our minds can take account of. Space is what we think of as the distance between bodies. There is no time with Him who is the First and the Last, who is, was, and is to come. There are no measurements of space with Him who fills heaven and earth.

The psalmist has stated the ground of his confidence in appealing to God. Now he draws a contrast between the eternal God and mortal man. God is the unchangeable God, the same before the world was as now. Creation may pass, yet God remains. The One who is our resource is everlasting and unchanging — "from everlasting to everlasting you are God."

Generation after generation would come and go; but there is One who has been Israel's dwelling-place and their refuge in all generations… In His hands are all men. And their mortality becomes clear as they die under His hand. But the race does not become extinct… Men then may pass away, but the Everlasting One remains. Time to Him is nothing. A thousand years — and no man has ever yet lived so long — are in His eyes only like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night. That is what God is — everlasting. That is what men are — fleeting mortal creatures.

Jehovah, as the Eternal One, is the true dwelling-place of His people in all ages. He goes on His steady way from eternity to eternity without the shadow of turning. In contrast to this, mortal man is turned to destruction. As children of Adam we lie under the original sentence, "you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

This mighty God, He who is "from everlasting to everlasting," has been revealed in Christ in perfect love. What He is in Himself shapes His movements in grace towards us. We can surely know and enjoy in our day what Moses said of God's earthly people — "The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms." … He leads in the "way everlasting," and at last He says, even to a wayward people, "I have loved you with an everlasting love."

The psalm looks at Him as from everlasting, and it traces Him to everlasting too. This is further proof that the Son is God, as Scripture says: "From everlasting to everlasting You are God." When the created heavens and earth have done their work, He who made them will fold them up and lay them aside, as men do a worn-out garment. For when the stream of time has run its course according to the divine counsels, eternity goes on.

Though Israel did not realise who this really was, there is no doubt that Moses is speaking of Christ the Lord. He is the Creator… No other can ever claim this place. So the psalm that stresses man's frailty begins with the eternal glory of the Lord Jesus.

The book opens with the ninetieth psalm, a genuine psalm of the wilderness. It is the lament over the generation dying out there under the wrath of God; but it is only the expression of the common doom. God who made man out of the dust is turning him back to it again. Yet He is surely man's dwelling place in all generations! What a strange disorder sin has brought in!

Adonai is acknowledged as Israel's dwelling place in all generations. He is El, from everlasting to everlasting. He turns weak man (enosh) to dust, and says, Return, sons of men (Adam). He is the God of creation and of providence.

In contrast to this, mortal man is turned to destruction. As children of Adam we lie under the original sentence, "You are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Gen. 3:19). In verse 3 of our Psalm the word "destruction" is literally "crumbling." Darby's translation renders it, "You make mortal man to return to dust, and say, Return, children of men." Man stands before us as a poor, feeble mortal creature. The point is that he is this by the express act of God.

Their mortality becomes apparent as they die under His hand. But the race does not become extinct. For the word goes forth from the Everlasting One, "Return, you children of men." That is how we understand the third verse, bearing in mind the term used for man. In the first clause it is Enosh — that is, mortal man — referring to their dying. In the second clause the Psalmist speaks of them as children of men, Adam — that is, the race. Men may pass away, but the Everlasting One remains.

But with the sentence of death upon them, God tells them, "Return, O children of men." Return to their former condition? Not at all, but return to God.

He is "the sovereign Lord of life and death." He kills; death is His black-winged messenger. It is He who "returns man to dust" and says, "Return, O children of man!" (Ps. 90:3), and who on "the last day" will make His voice heard by all who sleep in the grave. He "makes alive," and "brings up" from the grave. Resurrection is the sovereign act of His power.

He who created all things has the power, and is their God. It is by His anger they are consumed, not by man's power or will. He could say "return," when He turned to destruction... Nothing but divine power could restore them. Their cry gave all supreme glory to God, and was righteous in acknowledging His hand and their condition. The secret of God was with them, it was in their cry... "Return, O Jehovah, how long?"

The psalmist has already given the ground of his confidence in appealing to God. Now he draws a contrast between the eternal God and mortal man. God is the unchangeable God, the same before the world was as now. Creation may pass, yet God remains. The One who is our resource is everlasting and unchanging — "From everlasting to everlasting you are God."… In the sight of God there is no time as men count time.

Time to Him is nothing. A thousand years (and no man has ever yet lived so long) are in His eyes but as yesterday, when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Such is God — everlasting. Such are men, fleeting mortal creatures.

In contrast with His feeble creatures, there remained that eternity of His which they never entered. The thousand years went beyond even the life of Methuselah, yet in His sight they were only the memory of yesterday, now past, and in its dark shadow, only "as a watch in the night."

Scripture uses the word yesterday for the previous day, as in Exodus 5:14, John 4:52 and Acts 7:28. It also uses it for past time in general, as in "a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday", and when it says the Lord Jesus is "the same yesterday and today and forever."

The heading of Psalm 90 gives Moses as its author, and that should catch our attention at once. It makes it fairly certain that this is the earliest of the psalms, written some hundreds of years before the rest. The heading calls Moses not the prophet or the law-giver but the man of God. It also calls the psalm a prayer, though the first eleven verses ask for nothing at all.

Geologists may demand millions of years for certain results to be produced. God can do in one day what we think, in our weak and very limited knowledge and mistaken ideas, should take millions of years to bring about. One thousand years may seem a long time to us. Generation after generation comes and goes. Dynasty after dynasty rises and vanishes. To God it is but a brief day.

So we have to face the fact, stated in verse 8, that God's ideas of time are very different from ours. A thousand years are as one day to Him, as Psalm 90:4 had already told us. One day is also as a thousand years, as verse 10 of our chapter shows. We must not therefore count Him slack if much time has elapsed to our way of thinking.

Take days and years out of their ordinary counting by time, and tie them instead to the Lord and His coming… then faith's reckonings become like His… This new way of counting lets us say, of this gap that seems so long and measures His absence, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you."

Man was once appointed lord over the things of nature — even over the grass under his feet. Now those same things become images in which he may see himself. He has been brought down to the common level of what was only his kingdom, and under his rule. "Like grass which grows up: in the morning it flourishes and grows up; by the evening it is cut down and withers."

In contrast to this, mortal man is turned to destruction. As children of Adam we lie under the original sentence: "you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Gen. 3:19). In verse 3 of our Psalm the word "destruction" is literally "crumbling."… Man stands before us as a poor, feeble, mortal creature. And the point is this: he is what he is by the express act of God.

The cause of it is His anger, which is consuming us, His hot wrath, which distresses us. But why such anger? It is not the blind heat of passion. It is careful judgment, weighing everything in the fairest scales. "You have set our iniquities before You," and, with knowledge from which nothing can escape, "our secret sins in the light of Your presence."

He is cut down and withers as swiftly as a handful of grass. Seventy years were the ordinary measure of his days. This applied in a special way to the people among whom Moses moved in the wilderness. All those counted from twenty years old and upward came under that word: "your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness" (Num. 14:29)… It is remarkable that God used a man to declare seventy to be man's days. That man lived to one hundred and twenty, and when he died at that age he was still full of strength.

Every statement here about frailty, uncertainty and death is true of the whole human race. But even in this Psalm about the first man, with his sin and death, we must see the prophetic side. If verses 7-8 are true of those who died in the wilderness, they are also true of God's earthly people in the time of their trouble.

The wonderful Person portrayed in this Psalm is the Second Man, so different from all other men. He is holy in Himself, His life untainted and never forfeited. Yet He will go into death on behalf of the feeble dying men so vividly pictured in Psalm 90… No evil, and not even death, had any power over Him, because death had no claim on Him. He went into death because His love drove Him there.

Since our days are short, we need grace from God to number them. To number them is to keep them under close watch, so that we do not lose the lessons each day is meant to teach. That is the exercise by which we "get a heart of wisdom."